“You’ve helped me so much already. I couldn’t possibly ask for more.”
He took another bite of his lunch. “If you need something, ask. Don’t be shy, V. Not with me.”
I was glad he was staring into his salad, because my cheeks heated at his words. Of course I was shy with him. Did he have any idea the effect he had on me?
“Thanks,” I whispered, drinking some more coffee. “I do have one favor to ask,” I said, suddenly remembering.
“Anything.”
“Can you take me to get my car?”
He nodded. “Of course. Let’s go after I’m done eating.”
When he was finished eating, I headed to “my” room and changed back into my jeans and Central t-shirt from the day before. I folded “my” pajamas and made “my” bed, and then I gathered my purse, my phone, and the paperwork he’d so thoughtfully printed out for me.
Before I knew it, we were headed back to the bar where everything had changed the night before, and I suddenly realized the magnitude of what was happening. I was about to leave my husband, and I was moving in with another man. It was a strange realization. For all intents and purposes, he was just a friend, but there was certainly an undercurrent of something more between us, at least on my end. For the first time in a long time, I felt excited about the future.
He pulled his truck in next to my car. I grabbed the door handle, ready to open it and hop out, when he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Here,” he said, handing me a key and a garage remote. “For my house, when you get back.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, touched that he genuinely wanted me to stay with him, so much so that he actually had given me a key and a garage door opener.
“When will you be back?” he asked, his eyes covered with sunglasses.
I shrugged. “Why? Got big plans tonight?” I winked, hoping I was wrong but wanting to know if he was heading out later that night to bang some lucky girl.
“Nope. Cancelled them in favor of hanging out with my new houseguest,” he grinned.
And I blushed.
This was getting predictable.
“I have no idea how long I’ll be,” I said, digging through my purse for my car keys. “Can I text you and let you know?”
He nodded. “We’ll play it by ear.”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Jesse. For everything.”
“You bet. Catch ya later.”
I grinned. “Catch ya later,” I repeated, and then I hopped down and closed the door behind me.
I got in my car and started it, and he waited until I started pulling away to leave. I felt his eyes on me, or at least on my car, and he followed a safe distance behind me until I turned into my neighborhood and he continued straight ahead to his house.
The lightness I felt with Jesse dissipated the moment we were apart, and the heaviness of what my life had become without him settled back over me as I turned down my street and into my driveway.
When Richard and I had purchased our house, we had both loved it. We closed two weeks before our wedding and slowly moved our items in, and we decided that we would wait until we were married to officially move in. We had already lived together in our small apartment, but this was a huge and beautiful and perfect home. We bought it from a couple who had owned it and loved it and cared for it, but they were getting a divorce and needed to sell it. Funny, I thought now, how we thought we’d be the ones to create a happy life in this beautiful house.
Maybe it was the cursed house that was our downfall. But I knew that wasn’t the truth.
The truth of the matter was that Richard changed into someone I really didn’t like almost immediately after we said our “I do’s.” He became controlling and manipulative, always working to get his way and leading me to believe that his way was what I really wanted, too. He was a salesman by profession, and the sliminess of how he handled his day job trickled slowly but surely into his personality. He was a realtor, but he was one of those realtors who made all kinds of promises on which he never delivered. He was one of those realtors only after the commission, not after helping someone find the perfect home. He was good at what he did, but I found him becoming more and more of a salesman and less and less of the sweet and caring man I’d married.
I had no doubt that he would easily find another woman, but it just couldn’t be me anymore.
I saw his car in the garage when I pulled in, and that heaviness pressed down profoundly on my shoulders. I suddenly wished I had asked Jesse to help me with this, because everything seemed so much easier when he was around.
I walked into the house and dropped my keys and my purse on the counter in the mudroom, slipping my phone into my pocket and pulling the papers that Jesse had printed for me out of my purse, hugging them to my chest. I smelled the faintest hint of Jesse on them. I walked into the kitchen and found Richard sitting at the kitchen table.